Midway through Amei Wallach’s sparkling new documentary “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here,” an art historian is explaining the workings of one of Ilya’s museum installations. The center of the room is filled with large tables, forcing museumgoers to walk close to the walls on which various paintings are hung. “The center is already occupied, and you are forced into the margins,” the interviewee says.

Arthur Hertzberg once said that for Judaism to survive in the 21st century it had to be more than just “anti-anti-Semitism and ‘hooray for Israel.’” You could say the same about Jewish documentary films. Regular readers of these pages know that the bulk of non-fiction film with Jewish themes focus their attention on the Shoah and the Jewish state.

Midway through Amei Wallach’s sparkling new documentary “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here,” an art historian is explaining the workings of one of Ilya’s museum installations. The center of the room is filled with large tables, forcing museumgoers to walk close to the walls on which various paintings are hung. “The center is already occupied, and you are forced into the margins,” the interviewee says.

Famous documentary filmmakers fall into a few groups. There are the living masters like Frederick Wiseman and Albert Maysles who have earned deserved reputations as master craftsmen and storytellers. There are the self-promoters like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, who like to think they have invented themselves and their profession. (Errol Morris is sort of a cross between these two groups.) And there are the essayists, who range from the quirky-personal like Ross McElwee to the cerebral-philosophical like the late Chris Marker.

Pablo Elliott, a Jewish organic famer who lives in rural Virginia, admits that sometimes his family’s Judaism looks as if “we’re making it up as we go along.” True, they improvise. But their celebrations of Shabbat and community are full of sincerity and devotion. He explains, “We are inventing, creating a life. Every generation does this.”